


Impromptu Overture

by bigchickcannibalistic



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Relationship, after the first Liberation Rite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 23:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11725011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigchickcannibalistic/pseuds/bigchickcannibalistic
Summary: Pamitha suddenly needs to go find something. Jodariel doesn't trust that something not to be Highway Remnants.(Set during the wait after the First Liberation Rite. No major spoilers.)





	Impromptu Overture

**Author's Note:**

> So I took to playing Pyre to break my writer's block and well... it did, just with a new fic.  
> I'm not at all confident whether I've captured their personalities right, so I apologise in advance if I didn't.
> 
> Anyway thanks for reading!

Why is it that the Harp’s restlessness hits its peak on the coldest day they’ve ever experienced? Well, it wasn’t this cold in the Moonlit Alcove, and the Emperor’s Fall does lead to the snowed path down the mountain, but those were details. Like how bringing a warmer cloak is a detail. (Or how their Commanders organized extensive missions beyond the Bloodborder during the coldest months.)

“Truly I don’t need an escort. Not that your presence isn’t charming, Jodi darling. I’m simply saying I’d have done this quicker. Alone,” says the Harp for the fifth time since they’ve set out. Jodariel casts a side glance. Credit where credit is due the Harp is good at concealing her distaste for the cold – she only shook her feathers thrice to mask her shivers.

“So you keep saying, Harp.”

“Can’t have you going deaf, darling.” The Harp gives a loop-sided smile that enunciates the glint in her eyes. A glint that still scrapes on Jodariel’s nerves.

Jodariel glares, but remains silent.

“You know,” the Harp starts after they pass the last of the statues, “one would get the suspicion that you don’t trust me.”

“I don’t,” Jodariel says simply. She hears a gasp that couldn’t be anything other than for dramatics – remove the high pitch and add an undercurrent of a growl and you’ve got Rukey’s dramatics. If she can ignore the Cur, she can certainly ignore the Harp. “Come off it. I trust you as far as I can throw you.”

She hears a laugh, quite pleasant to the ears, and a flutter of feather before she sees the Harp again. “You’ve got a good arm on you. Daresay lobbing those orbs helped.” She says this with a different glint in her eyes – almost appreciative.

Jodariel feels pricks on the back of her neck. “Throwing you requires I catch you, Harp.”

“Have heart. I’m most certain you’ll manage it, Jodi darling.” Jodariel raises her brow. “When I’m so drunk on moonshine, I mistake you for the wyrm-knight.”

Jodariel wrinkles her nose at the image. Thankfully they descend in silence.

\-----

They argue over which way to go to fetch whatever it is the Harp needs. She refuses to say even still, and Jodariel’s losing her already benevolent amounts of patience. _I’m trying Reader,_ she thinks as the Harp continues (stubbornly) to argue the steeper decline.

(If you told Captain Jodariel that in 16 years’ time she’d been arguing with a Harp on the side of a snowy mountain over directions, she’d glare at you and consider latrine duty for seven months. Now Jodariel, without the Captain, thinks she’ll just send them to deal with _Pamitha_.)

“In case you’ve forgotten I don’t have wings to traverse that!” Jodariel shouts. She pinches the bridge of her nose, a headache oncoming in waves, and takes a deep breath. She hears a flutter, feels wind on her face. Her eyes snap open just in time to see the Harp glide down the path. Jodariel curses into her hand.

_I am trying,_ Jodariel thinks on the way down, eyes keeping to the sky as much as possible, searching for the traces of red feathers. _But Scribes and Stars I will throttle that Harp._

(A barely visible root nearly sends _her_ throttling down.)

\-----

Of course when Jodariel finds her – following where she last saw the red feathers and following the echoes of the Harp’s voice, because Jodariel certainly didn’t lose the Harp after the second murderous root nearly cost her a set of horns. Absolutely not. She’s just honing her tracking skills. It’s been a few months since she last had to use them.

Where were – oh yes. When Jodariel finds the Harp, her patience swept with the wind and her fingers numbing, she has to blink several times because – well, there couldn’t possibly be four Harps there, three of which are donned in Highwing Remnants armour. But Pamitha is looking back and forth, wings shifting more than the movement required, so that’s a confirmation if Jodariel’s ever seen one.

_Have the Harps suddenly grown a fondness for the cold?_

“Now before anyone does anything unsavoury,” Pamitha says with raised wings, clearly aimed to stop them. It would be more effective if she wasn’t standing on the sidelines. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

And the look she gives Jodariel, pointed and steely, halts the scoff building in her throat. It ends up being swallowed down into a growl. “Then what is it, Harp?”

“A really coincidental meeting of two parties that has no reason to turn blo–”

“YOU! I know you!” shouts one of the Remnants, baring her teeth. “Slaughterer! Murderer!”

Jodariel straightens to her full height, fists clenched, and for a moment she’s transported back to the Bloodborder, staring down at the Highway Remnants with her squad behind her, at the ready. (Except she’s alone now, and hardly anything like the Captain from the Commonwealth.)

“Please, how can you tell?” Pamitha interjects, waving her feathers dismissively Jodariel’s way. “They all look the same beneath those helmets.”

“I’d know the ox-spat killer that slaughtered my family even if the Saint blinded me,” spat the Harpy, wings raised high and posture low. Ready to take flight. _Terrific._

“Why defend her, sister?” asks another Harp. Jodariel can’t help but wonder the same. It’s no secret they get along like a Sap openly courts fire; and these are her people, who have to quarrel with her. The simplest solution would be for the Harp to back away, get what she needs and leave.

“Hardly matters. Get the killer!”

And Pamitha might look actually worried in the split second Jodariel looks at her before her sight’s filled with brown feathers and talons.

\----

_It is a mess – a mess worthy of the Bloodborder’s name. Corpses everywhere, both feathery and not, and the Harps just. Keep. Coming._

_Part of her is envious of their stamina. Part of her commends their persistence. All of her matches their ferociousness, given them as good as she gets, trying – perhaps in vain – to protect her squad –_

_A shout from her left. She turns just in time to see a Harp pull out their spear from a fallen soldier. Aims it at another with – that mask, Jodariel hasn’t seen it before._ (Yet she has, in the Rites, paired with blue and red feathers.) _Jodariel doesn’t think, doesn’t process. She just charges, screaming_ (roaring), _swinging with her weapon – a sword, a dagger, a spear, her bare hands, what was it?_

_She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care._

_Jodariel fells a talon scraped against her arm – it was aimed at her face. She barely reacts when another digs into her leg, and she catches it, out of reflex. Catches it and throws the Harp into someone._

_There’s screaming, shouting all around, shrieking above and behind and it’s too much, too disorienting._

“Jodariel!” _rings above all the rest, oddly clear amid the cacophony. Oddly familiar._ _Another Harp comes at her and she pushes through, sends them this way and that and roars, ready for another –_

“Jodariel, no!”

_Screaming. It all becomes screaming. No, one scream, loud and long and earth shaking and it makes her head hurt, makes her vision swim and she can’t breathe beneath the mask, she has to – has to take it off and –_

_And it has curved horns?_

(Her fingers are numb and there’s the sound of something falling – sliding, crushing but she –

She sees nothing.)

\-----

Something scrapes at her shoulder, digging in painfully. Then something tugs at her foot, tugs and tugs until Jodariel feels something give way and fall on it.

Jodariel hears a huff somewhere above her. It rings around her.

“Come on you gorgeous irritable giant of a woman –” Something tugs around her neck, and her shoulders scrape against something – the ground? – again. “Wake up.”

Jodariel tries to say something beneath the fog, but it turns to grumbles.

“Come now, Jodi darling,” a chuckle, followed closely by a strained huff. “What’s an avalanche to you? You’ve stopped a storm with just a look.”

_Stopped a storm with what?_

It surprisingly enough draws a chuckle out of Jodariel. A chuckle that turns into a groan once all her sense return to her. Her right leg is burning something fierce. Slowly Jodariel blinks awake, surprised to see tiny specks of light above her. (She expected the sun shining blindingly, or the frescos in one of Commonwealth’s medical facilities because – because she was on the Bloodborder. Wasn’t she?)

Then a silhouette of a familiar annoying Harp. Now Jodariel can’t see her face very well, but she would swear on her horns that Pamitha looks _relieved_. And that’s not an expression Jodariel’s seen on her. (It’s not unpleasant. Quite the opposite.)

“No,” Jodariel croaks. She manages to straighten up, her arms stinging with the movement and her cloak pressing dangerously into her throat. She tugs until she can breathe proper, and notes how the Harp’s keeping close to her right. But not too close.

“No,” she tries again, voice cleared, “I didn’t stop a storm with a look.”

“But have you tried?”

Jodariel glares at the Harp’s grin. “Where are we? What happened to the other Harps?”

The Harp wraps her wings around her, reminiscent of how one crosses his arms. “We thoroughly thrashed them, if I do say so myself.” She juts her chin out proudly. “Until you had to throw a Harp onto a Wallowing Stone. The Stone’s got some range in it, summoned the mother of all avalanches.”

A beat of silence. “Oh and we’re in a cave, in case that’s not obvious.”

Well it is obvious now that Jodariel’s had the opportunity to look around, and ignore how she doesn’t remember the fight with the Harps, doesn’t remember anything aside from one of the Harps lunging - her arms sting just thinking about it.

She looks down to inspect the damage, and is surprised to see them bandaged, in a cloth that’s the same shade of blue as her cloak. She’s certain if she looked she’d find several pieces missing from it.

“You bandaged my wounds?” Jodariel asks. _Why –_ is what she means to ask but can’t bring herself. The Harp could’ve ran once the fight started, it was clear she had no interest in fighting (and isn’t that puzzling, a Harp that doesn’t wish to fight.) She also didn’t have to drag Jodariel inside, let alone _tend to her wounds._ And Jodariel wants to ask her about all of those but – but she can’t. They words won’t come out.

So she just stares at the Harp – at _Pamitha_.

Pamitha stood in a way best described as mix of awkward and miffed, and looked away. “I get queasy. And I’d rather save us both the conversation of why I vomited on you.”

“Smart decision.”

“Is that a compliment?” Pamitha quickly recovers, falling back into her playful persona.

Jodariel scoffs, and tries to stand up instead of answering. Her leg protests, but Jodariel bites her lip and powers through it until she’s fully standing on her two feet. Upon a brief look, Pamitha seems closer than she was a second ago, as if she was ready to assist Jodariel. Or catch her.

That is… awfully considerate.

“I’m fine,” Jodariel says, glaring. Pamitha tilts her head, eyes unreadable. “We should look for another way out.”

“Not going to dig out way out?”

“A last resort.” And Jodariel moves to go deeper into the cave. Once she puts pressure on her wounded leg it bucks, pain shooting through her so suddenly her knee bends. Wings come around her arm, firm and soft, and hold her up.

“I see you’re in tip-top shape, Jodi darling,” Pamitha teases, but when Jodariel looks over there’s a flash of worry in her eyes. Something tugs in her chest, and Jodariel finds herself (reluctantly) letting Pamitha help her walk, but –

“We’ll never speak of this.”

“Naturally.”

\----

Oddly enough the cave goes upward, which doesn’t help with Jodariel’s leg.

“We’re in luck. There’s an exit we can squeeze through,” Pamitha says overhead as Jodariel hoists herself over the edge.

“We or you?”

Pamitha glides close but still an arms-length away. She gives a thoughtful hum. “Now that you mention it –”

“Pamitha…”

“Oh relax, darling. It’s big enough for our wagon to squeeze through.” Pamitha grins. She swoops to Jodariel’s right, hoisting her arm over her shoulder. “As our darling Reader would say: Onward.”

“What were you looking for?” Jodariel asks. It’s been pestering her on the climb up. No, what’s been pestering her is how Pamitha hasn’t spoken anything about it. (No what’s been pestering her is Pamitha period. And not entirely in a bad way.)

(She doesn’t know what to do about that.)

“Nothing to worry about.”

“You didn’t set out here, in the cold, for nothing.” Jodariel raises her brow.

“I’ll give you that. It’s simply that, well,” her lips quirk up, “you threw a Harp at it, and now it’s buried beneath the snow. I’m not about to go dig it out.”

“A Wallowing Stone?” Jodariel furrows her brows. “What for?”

Pamitha’s smile turns secretive. “It wouldn’t do to reveal all of my cards. I have to leave you something to guess.”

_Damn Harp._

\-----

They’ve barely exited the cave – and Pamitha was telling the truth the exit’s big enough for their wagon – when a loud, squeaky voice greets them.

“HUZZAH! You are alive and well!” Sir Gilman jumps out from a rock that seemed to be part of something bigger given the shape of it. He slithers to them, and manages to open his helmet on the first try. (Jodariel’s seen him practicing.) “Oh this knight is thrilled and relieved and overjoyed that both of you are alive and well! The whole wagon shook when the avalanche happened, and it startled this knight so much he foiled his routine.”

He hangs his head, and had the helmet not fallen closed, Jodariel’s certain he would’ve cried. Pamitha on the other hand seems to be hiding a smile beneath her wing. Jodariel clears her throat loud enough to make her stop.

“BUT!” continues Sir Gilman, flicking the helmet open again. “Our brave Reader-knight suggested we search for you and YOURS TRULY was the first out of the wagon and looking, vowing to find you. Followed closely by knight-Rukey – _but_ only closely. And, oh what a great honour has befallen this knight to be able to fulfil that vow. Underking has smiled upon this knight today indeed.”

And he goes on a tangent, much to no one’s surprise. Jodariel groans, covering her face with a hand. Pamitha thankfully decides to interrupt him.

“Now that you’ve found us, wyrm, how about we get back to the wagon? Preferably before both of us freeze?”

Sir Gilman twitches out of the knot he’s worked himself into, and with a tail-salute leads them back to the wagon. And he’s humming a marching song. And when Jodariel says humming, it means loudly singing in Sir Gilman’s language.

Pamitha has her ears covered, wincing at the volume. Jodariel grabs her by the shoulder, and slows so there’s a bigger distance between them and Sir Gilman. Then she inhales, closing her eyes briefly.

Pamitha’s looking at her curiously, one ear uncovered.

“Thank you,” Jodariel says simply, and continues on before Pamitha can say anything.

(But if she turned around, she could’ve seen a blush darkening Pamitha’s cheeks. And if she waited a few seconds more, she’d have the privilege of the slow, genuine smile that spreads on Pamitha’s face.

And maybe, just maybe it’d help decipher the feeling lodged in Jodariel’s chest.) 


End file.
